While free shps, item costs etc are all valid concerns....I think what the economy is now and will be later remains to be seen.

My concern is the mechanic that a refining cap introduces into your day outside of STO. I don't think forcing players to log in every day to refine their daily dilithium limit so they don't lose a day of progress is a good idea.

Auto refining or cap removal for subscribers is a great incentive, but also it will remove a very punitive restriction on players.

If the current system goes live, taking a break of even a day in STO will put you behind by a day in progression.

I don't have much to say about prices and conversions, those will be discussions that go on for as long as the game is running.

I tell you what this whole F2P comes down to. The reason they are putting these systems in place the way they are.

To kill lifetime members off. Let me explain.

The majority of players after F2P goes live will not be subs. Looking at Champions, as well as the majority of F2P games that allows subs, there are tiny populations that subscribe to the game.

If they give anything to gold members, lifetime players have no reason to spend money in the future. This is not what they want. They know the largest number of people who play this game will be in the group who buy a few items and move on.

They don't care if gold members feel it's worth it, simply because they know they will make more money off of silver players.

If they wanted to do that, they would have just chosen not to give us a stipend. They don't seem to be interested in making an aggressively marketed Gold Tier or recruiting more of us. That isn't the same thing as wanting lifers to leave though.

If they wanted to do that, they would have just chosen not to give us a stipend. They don't seem to be interested in making an aggressively marketed Gold Tier or recruiting more of us. That isn't the same thing as wanting lifers to leave though.

They probably did it just to avoid a class action lawsuit, is my thought.

Lets try to stay on topic on this one guys, because I think out of all the issues coming with this economy, the heart of the matter is going to fall on the daily cap.
Even if you are an active player, you could be sitting on a mountain of dilithium but be forced to log in daily to refine it, and if you miss a day, it's going to slow you down and lag you behind that much further.

Nothing in a game is more frustrating than getting all the pieces together for your next progression item, then having the server go down right before you can turn it in, this system might as well do that to you every day.
If you have enough dilithium to buy some gear but have to wait a week to finish refining it to purchase the gear, it's going to kill the fun of progression completely.

Games before anything need to be fun, artificial blockades are not fun, and if a game isn't fun, no one is going to bother playing it.